The brief was received in Valladolid about October 1st, but was not published in Lisbon until January 16, 1605. A royal cédula, however, was obtained, prohibiting the publication or execution of any sentences until this brief should take effect, thus including in its benefits all Portuguese who were in the hands of the Spanish tribunals, as well as in those of Portugal.[745] The effect of this was dramatically exhibited without delay. On October 20th the Seville tribunal announced a great auto de fe for November 7th. The stagings erected were on an unusually large scale; on the evening of the 6th took place the procession of the Green Cross, in which more than five hundred familiars participated; the people flocked in from the country in numbers beyond the capacity of the city to accommodate them. At night the confessors were introduced in the cells of those condemned to relaxation and, after completing all the preparations for the solemnity, the junior inquisitor, Fernando de Acebedo, sought his bed about eleven o'clock. Suddenly a courier arrived, armed with an order to admit him to the inquisitors, wherever they might be, whether in their houses or their beds, in consulta de fe or on the staging at the auto. He had left Valladolid at midnight on the 3d and, at break-neck speed, had made the distance to Seville in seventy-two hours, getting through the closed gates of the towns on the road, and arriving in time to serve on the inquisitors a royal cédula forbidding the celebration of the auto. Some there were who held that a royal decree was not to be obeyed unless rubricated by the Suprema, but this was an opinion not as yet established and, after a brief consultation, measures were hurriedly taken to suspend the celebration, to the blank astonishment of all Seville. Surmises were various, some explained it by the recent treaty with England, under which Englishmen in Spain were not to be troubled on account of heresy; others attributed it to the planets; others thought that among the condemned there was some one of lofty station and influence, whose friends had been able to save him, but the suggestion which found the widest acceptance was that it was due to the Portuguese New Christians, numerous and wealthy, who had offered large sums, estimated at eight hundred thousand ducats, to stave it off, and this was supported by the fact that the midnight horseman, before going to the Inquisition, had stopped at the house of Etor Autunez, a wealthy Portuguese merchant, who had given him fifty ducats for his good news.[746]